For security purposes, it is known to force a user of the computer system, such as a notebook computer, to provide user authentication information to the computer system during a login process and to allow the user access to the computer system only in the event of the authentication information provided by the user matching corresponding authentication information stored in the computer system.
While the above mentioned user authentication process is useful in preventing unauthorized access to a computer system, it suffers from the disadvantage that the corresponding authentication information is stored in a memory device, e.g., a hard disk of the computer system, and can be retrieved from the memory device by unauthorized persons.